Brothers
by BeshterAngelus
Summary: Rick Hunter is the bane of Roy Fokker's existence.  What else is a little brother for?  Sometimes brothers aren't born of blood, but of experience.
1. Chapter 1

_AN: This was a story I wrote for a concept of the Robotech series I want to eventually write, when I get through all the bunnies in my head. Roy and Rick's childhood together is never really discussed much and so I am playing around with it. Enjoy!_

Roy Fokker stared at the wiggling bundle in the carrier in front of him with a mixture of disgust and morbid fascination.

"Oh, isn't he just PRECIOUS!" His mother Sandy breathed as she reached to unwrap what Roy assumed was the top of the now mewling pile of cloth. He could just see inside a tuft of silky black strands sticking straight out.

"He's got Mitch's looks all over him," Aunt Delia beamed proudly, as she tipped the carrier up, allowing for better access to the 'thing'. Sandy Fokker nodded, reaching in, and pulling the object out of its protective hatch, wrapping her arms around it with an adoring look.

"And he's named Richard," Sandy asked as her eyes turned suddenly gooey, and a broad, warm smile light up her face. Roy found he was vaguely sick at the look of it, and instead turned his attention to the men outside. Mitch "Pop" Hunter was sitting on the front porch of the Hunter family's house, along with his older brother, Uncle Joe, and several of the men from the Hunter Bros. Flying Circus. Roy would rather be outside with them, talking about planes and flying. Instead, he got shooed inside with his mother to look at...the baby.

"Yes, Richard after Mitch and Joe's dad, and Benjamin, after my grandfather," Aunt Delia nodded, "All proud pilots like everyone else. He probably will be too!"

Roy raised doubtful eyes to the impossibly swathed thing in Sandy Fokker's arms. He couldn't believe something like that would ever make a world-class pilot, not the kind of pilot HE was going to be someday.

"What do you think of him, Roy," Sandy looked at her only son, her neat strawberry-blonde ponytail just coming into the reach of one tiny hand that seemed to wrap itself into the stuff. Roy imagined it was like an alien tentacle, come to grab his mother and eat her brains out. Suddenly he had no desire to see what was inside the soft blue blankets.

"I guess he's all right," Roy shrugged, looking down at his feet. Babies, what did he know about them except that they cried all day and messed in stuff? Why did Pop and Aunt Delia need one of those? Didn't they say that he was just like having a son of their own?

"Oh, you haven't gotten to see him properly, come over here." Sandy jerked her head at him, and reluctantly he followed her non-verbal summons. His mother settled on the couch near where she stood, and Roy settled beside her, and with a deep breath looked inside his mother's arms to see what the whining lump was.

It was even less exciting than he thought. It was a small thing, impossibly tiny, with pinkish skin, and dark black hair that seemed to stick out everywhere. He didn't think babies had hair, but this one had almost as much as his own thatch of blonde hair, which currently was hanging in his eyes. As if reading his thoughts, his mother removed one hand from under the baby, and brushed the yellow tangle out of his face.

"Honestly Roy, how can you see him like that," she chided, then shifted the baby even close. Roy knew he'd have to oblige her. He leaned in to get an even better look. The thing had finally opened its eyes, a murky sort of blue gray, and was currently trying to shove its fist up its rather small nostril.

"Why is he so small," was the only thing Roy could think of. He felt dumb for saying it, everyone knew babies would grow.

"He'll get big soon enough," Aunt Delia said defensively, but smiled all the same at him. Roy was too young to understand first time mother's protectiveness of their babies.

"What do you think, Roy, you think you and Rick can grow to be friends someday?" Sandy looked down at her son, and Roy could only shrug. After all, this 'Richard' was only a baby, what good was he to Roy?


	2. Chapter 2

The jangled twanging of crashing guitar strings caused Roy to drop the video game controller he'd held in his hands, and rush from the den of the Hunter family home and into his own bedroom upstairs. Storming in, he found what he had expected...his guitar lying face down on the floor, and on the bed above it a wide set of blue eyes and a thicket of dark hair trying to hide under a blanket, as if this would prevent them from the shouting that was soon to come.

"What are you doing in my room?" Roy didn't even stop to inspect the damage; rather he took to the yelling right away. This caused the small figure to huddle in closer under the blankets.

"Roy, quit picking on Rick," This was his mother, somewhere in the house; doing one of the many chores she did working for the Hunter's. Roy scowled back over his shoulder, as if his mother was sitting right there.

"He won't leave my stuff alone!" Roy howled back, crossing to his beloved guitar. It had been his father's, one of the few things he had left of Jim Fokker. This, a picture of his grandfather, and an antique model Fokker airplane his father had gotten him for a birthday, these were the only things that Roy had left to him. And Rick Hunter had managed to damage all of them at some point. At five-years-old, the small boy was a menace.

"I'm sorry Roy," Rick snuffled from under the blankets. "I was just playing a song!"

This snuffling was a typical Rick tactic to try and get out of trouble. He always thought by turning on the tears he'd get away with anything. The problem was he nearly always did.

"I told you not to mess with my stuff. I told you to stay out. But you never listen!" He picked up the guitar. The bridge was cracked clean off, and the strings hung limply from the neck, broken. The guitar was one of Roy's few sacred artifacts; it now was in ruins in his hands.

Blindly, he reached a hand over to the blanketed lump, and ripped the fabric back as hard as he could. Beneath it, the dark head cowered under tiny hands, and sobs were shaking the small shoulders. Roy was tall for his age, and despite gangly arms, he was strong. He grabbed the boy up by one shoulder, forcing him into a sitting position, and ignored the wet, red face that remorsefully looked back at him. All Roy could think of was that this uncontrollable brat had just destroyed everything that meant something to him, and no one seemed to care enough to do anything about it.

"You monster," Roy screamed harshly," You can't leave anything alone, can you? You think just because you are so little, you can get away with anything. Well you can't. Just because your mom died, doesn't make you special or anything, got it."

Rick only managed to sob harder as mucus began running out of his little nose.

"Roy Fokker, you unhand that child right now!" Sandy Fokker's voice was as cold as an Arctic wind, and just as shocking. Roy felt his red-hot anger quell beneath it, as he released the boy, and turned towards her. Rick for his part snuffled, slid off Roy's bed, and ran to Sandy, crying hysterically as Sandy wrapped a protective arm around the boy.

This gesture brought on a fresh wave of irritation, now directed at his mother. "Sure, protect him why don't you, everyone seems to anyway." Roy shot, seething despite the piercing glare of his mother's bright blue eyes. "Doesn't matter if he destroys anything that matters to anyone else, he gets off..."

"That's enough," Sandy roared, shutting off her son's tirade, but not his anger. He glared at her mutinously. "You are acting like a bully."

"And he's acting like a brat," Roy shot back, holding out his guitar in front of him as somewhere behind his eyes, a mysterious stinging began to form. "I found this, and him hiding in my bed."

Sandy looked down at the instrument brandished in front of her, and her flashing eyes softened somewhat. She recognized it immediately, and despite the still sobbing child attached to her leg, she moved to take it.

"Roy, it's just a guitar, it can be fixed," she started to say, but before she could even reach it, Roy had snatched it away from her, shocked she would say something like that.

"Just a guitar," Roy repeated, stunned. "It was DAD'S guitar, it was his, and he used to play it on the porch. Have you forgotten that?"

"Of course not, Roy," Sandy began, but Roy was too angry to continue.

"He broke it; he broke the only thing of Dad's I haven't had to fix. He comes into my stuff and messes around, as if he belongs here or something."

"He does belong here, Roy, it's his home too," Sandy tried to be reasonable.

"Yeah, and we are just guests in it," Roy retorted, and with a sudden angry gesture, he tossed his guitar towards his bed recklessly, bouncing it off the side wall, where he heard another sickening crack.

"It doesn't matter, it's just a guitar," Roy screamed back at his mother's shocked look, and rushed past her, towards the hallway, towards the front door.

"Just because his mother died doesn't mean he's the only one who doesn't have a parent," he hollered, as he ran hard out the door, down the porch, out towards the barns where the Hunter's kept their planes. Perhaps Uncle Joe would be there, working on something, and Roy could go and sit with him. But when he got inside, Joe Hunter was not there. The place was dark and cool, and musty with the scent of dirt and engine oil. It was a comforting place; it always had been, ever since the days he and his father used to work on their old Fokker plane together.

The old plane was just a pile of junk now, stowed away in the corner of the barn, most of it broken and unusable save for parts. It had been the instrument of his father's death, actually, he had crashed it on its first test flight. That had been eight years ago. Roy hoped someday to repair it and make it fly again, like it had when he was a boy. But for now it, like everything else he had of his father's, was just a broken memory.

He didn't know how long he'd been in the barn curled up in the remnants of his father's dream, when Uncle Joe had come in and found him. It was dark outside, and it might have been for hours.

"There you are," Joe had gruffed, as he spied the white-blonde hair amongst the dirty and tattered canvas covering the old Fokker plane. "You're mother's about frantic."

"I didn't think she cared," Roy shot back, but not meeting Joe's eyes. He knew he'd made his mother worry, and secretly was glad for it.

"Well she cared enough that she was about to call the Sheriff out here to look for you." Uncle Joe shrugged, and settled on an old oil drum that was sitting nearby. Joe Hunter was around the age Roy's father would have been had he lived; they had served together in Vietnam. But Joe Hunter looked far too old already; he had steel gray hair, and a squinted, weathered face. Roy knew he should only be in his forties. He looked more like Roy's only grandfather, who lived far away in Topeka.

"She should know I'd be here," Roy grumbled, stretching muscles stiff from sitting for far too long. Joe nodded in agreement.

"That's what I said, hence why I came out here. She's awful sorry about the guitar, Roy,"

"Why, she didn't break it," Roy tried to sound nonchalant.

"No, but she didn't mean to let Rick into your room either."

"He went in there all by himself; he's always going in there," Roy returned hotly,

"She just won't do anything about that."

"And that's what she means. She thought she had sent Rick outside to play, but he had come in and gone upstairs without her knowing. And she's sorry for not keeping a better eye on him."

"He gets away with everything, you know," Roy muttered petulantly. "Every since Aunt Delia..." Roy felt horribly guilty then, bringing up Delia Hunter the way he did. He remembered being Rick's age when his own father died, and how much it had hurt. And he remembered Aunt Delia being the one to make him feel better. He couldn't imagine how it would feel if someone had accused him of being a brat just because his own father had died.

"Well, there is something to that," Uncle Joe nodded knowingly. "I've been telling Pop for a while now that Rick isn't getting any proper discipline. Mitch is so eaten up by Delia's loss." Again, another wave of guilt hit Roy. "And he's not been as mindful of Rick as he should be. The boy misses his mama, what can I say, and there's only so much that you or I or your mom can do. He just wants someone to spend time with him and make him feel like everything will be OK."

"I would, but he's always messing in my stuff," Roy insisted, feeling that this point was getting forgotten once again.

"That he is, but maybe it's because he wants to be like you, Roy."

"Why would he want to do that?" Roy wrinkled his nose. The idea was weird to him.

"Well, think about it, he hasn't got any brothers or sisters; the closest he's got is you. You've been there all his life. He looks up to you, Roy. Hell, every time you go up in the air with Pop, he stands on the ground watching you. And when you are talking with me about how things work in the engine, or the design of the latest model, Rick tries to listen to every word you say. He adores you, Roy."

Stunned, Roy blinked for several minutes quietly, as he processed this information. "Rick wants to be like me? Why?"

"Cause, you're the only big brother he's ever going to have." Uncle Joe said simply.

When Uncle Joe and Roy returned to the house several minutes later, Roy was much more subdued and thoughtful. His mother tearfully apologized and promised to repair the guitar, which had now also gained a crack in the soundboard thanks to his rant. He apologized for his outburst, and this patched things up between mother and son, but little Rick watched Roy with careful, sky-blue eyes all evening, as the Hunters and Fokkers settled to dinner. Not feeling particularly hungry, Roy ate enough to satisfy his mother, and excused himself to his room, where he sat quietly, thinking about the day's events, and the responsibility he just discovered he had.

He hadn't noticed the small knock on his door, or that it had even opened. It wasn't till a small voice beside his bed caused him to jump that he even noticed a tearful Rick standing there, with a plush, stuffed airplane clutched to his chest. Most children would have a teddy bear; Rick Hunter had Arnie the Airplane. Holding it tightly, like a talisman, he stared down at his feet, not meeting Roy's eyes.

"What's up, bub," Roy finally spoke as the little boy sniffled.

"I was gonna say I was sorry, Roy, for breaking your guitar," Rick finally murmured in a voice so small Roy could barely hear it.

"I know," Roy said simply. "And I'm sorry for calling you a brat." Rick nodded, but still didn't meet Roy's eyes.

"Listen," Roy finally said after a minute of watching the small boy standing there, picking at his stuffed airplane. "Why don't you get me that book your mom used to read all the time, the one with the knight and the fairy princess?"

Rick looked up, his blue eyes bright. "Really,"

"Yeah, I'll read it to you if you want." Roy recalled how he had wanted his father to be there to read to him so badly when he was Rick's age. And he remembered how he wished he had someone to read to him like his Dad did.

"Will you make the dragon noises, like Mommy did?" Rick asked, real delight shining in his face.

"Sure, but don't make me talk all girly for the princess, OK." Roy laughed, as the dark head turned and ran out of the room quickly, calling back he'd be back in a minute.


	3. Chapter 3

"Roy, what are you going to do with this when you get it fixed up?" Rick asked, as he handed Roy another tool from the box sitting on the floor of the barn beside where they sat working.

"We'll fly it, dufus, what else," Roy snorted from under the antique airplane he'd been rebuilding for months now. As a sixteenth birthday present, Pop and Uncle Joe had agreed to help Roy get the parts necessary to fix up his father's old plane. It was the biggest dream of Roy Fokker's life. His mother had been less than thrilled.

"Why can't we just get him a car?" She had asked, terrified of her son trying to fix up the very plane that had killed her own beloved husband. Roy had been jubilant. He'd fix the old thing up again, and he'd be more careful than his father had been. But he needed an assistant in his task. Rick had of course jumped at the chance to help.

"What if something goes wrong again," Rick sounded worried. At eight, he knew the story of Roy's own father. Rick's mother had died, and he understood loss. Roy knew that Rick was more than a bit afraid that this particular plane was cursed.

"Well then I'll fix it. Nothing will go wrong." Roy had all the teenagers' belief that anything he set his mind to would work. Rick quietly accepted this but his worried frown didn't go away.

"Tell you what, how about I let you come up with me for the first flight?"

"Whoopee, would ya', Roy?" Rick's face lit up like a Roman candle then, a broad grin reaching from ear to ear.

"Sure would, besides, I was your age when your dad used to take me up."

This sobered Rick. "Wish Pop would take me up too. He says I'm too young, but I'm not if you were my age when he let you fly."

"Well," Roy thought quickly. He knew Pop was very leery of taking Rick up, especially after having lost a wife. Losing his son would be too much. "He will eventually."

"I just want to fly, Roy," Rick sighed, toying with a wrench from the box. "Everyone in my family flew, and I want to."

"You'll fly someday, Rick, just be patient." Roy said soothingly. "I'm your big brother, you don't trust me?"

"You aren't REALLY my big brother," Rick was going through a very literal phase at the moment. The complex nature of his family unit, made up of his father, uncle, Roy's mother, and Roy, was something new he was still trying to understand in the terms of so called 'normal' families.

"Well I grew up with you, I was there when you were born, and it's almost as good." Roy shot back.

"But real brothers have the same parents," Rick insisted.

Roy moved his head from under the plane to look at the boy. Over six feet already, he had to crouch from under the fuselage then stand tall to look down at the dark head on the floor.

"Sometimes, Rick, brothers are made, not born. You'll figure it out when you are older."

Rick rolled his eyes. The line "You'll figure it out when you are older," drove him mad.

"Why is everything secret till I'm older?"

"Cause it just is," Roy snorted. "You'll get your secret knowledge card when you turn my age."

"But you are seventeen, that's NINE whole years away!" Rick sounded like it was an eternity.

"Nine whole years, how will you make it?" Roy taunted as Rick tossed a wrench bit at him.

"Watch it, if you keep that up, I won't take you up tomorrow." Roy waggled an eyebrow at him.

"What!" Rick leaped up, and then clasped his hands in front of him dramatically. "Roy, I didn't mean it, PLEASE take me up!"

"I'll think about it," Roy grinned wickedly as Rick pleaded below.


	4. Chapter 4

"Shhh," Roy held up a pale hand in the moonlight to the figure that crouched low beside him. Soft, scared breathes ceased suddenly, and Roy peeked through the Hunter living room window. All was quite, and the room was dark.

"OK," he whispered as he pulled the lithe girl from her stoop upwards. "We have to be REALLY quiet; the house is old and the floors creek. Mom sleeps up at the top, but I swear she has ears like a bat."

"You sure you want to do this," her voice was playful, but wary. Roy found himself grinning slowly at her.

"Of course," he bent his head down towards hers, catching her mouth with his lips, before pulling up and glancing back into the darkened house. "OK, so follow me, but very slowly."

He opened the front door slowly, slipping off his tennis shoes with the toes of the opposite foot, and stepping onto the hardwood floors carefully. Ashley, the girl behind him, slipped off her sandals and followed suit in bare feet.

They made their way to the stairs opposite the door, and carefully, one at a time, crept up the old farmhouse steps, to the first room just to the right of the staircase. The door was shut, and under the door jamb there was a soft glow of a pale light.

"Computer," Roy whispered when Ashley pointed to it. Roy often left his screen on, allowing him to see in the dark on these late night returns from town. At eighteen, he was old enough to not need his mother waiting up for him every night. But he knew he'd hear it if she caught him bringing a girl home, no matter how old he or she was.

"You are eighteen, right," Roy murmured as an afterthought, his hand reaching the doorknob.

"Yeah, why?" Ashley frowned, bemused.

"Oh, nothing." Roy shrugged, chuckling, opening the door with painful precision, to prevent it from squeaking loud enough to alert others of his arrival. He held it open for his guest, checking both ways down the hallway to make sure no one was making their way out for a midnight check of the house. He quietly followed behind her.

Once the door was closed, he turned to the dark haired girl, who smiled at him in shy invitation. Pulling her close to him, he paid no attention to the world around him, only his lips on her soft ones, his hands reaching down her back, and the sweet sound off…

"Oh God, Roy, you have to do that here!"

Roy had no idea that his heart could jump somewhere behind his eyeballs. Pushing Ashley away so hard she nearly flipped onto the bed behind her, he turned wide-eyed to the sound of Rick Hunter's voice from the high backed office chair that sat in front of his desktop computer. The dark-haired, mop-topped youth looked both inquisitive and slightly disgusted, his blue eyes smirking at him from his pale, round face.

"You little…" Roy nearly lunged across the room at the boy, who scurried out of the seat and towards the closet, as if this was a convenient way to hide from his attacker.

"I'll scream for Aunt Sandy if you do," Rick threatened boldly, terrified despite his bravado.

"What are you doing…"Roy started, as Rick stammered a reply.

"You told me I could play with your computer," Rick defended himself, pointing a finger to the still glowing screen. On it was the simulated airplane fighting game that Roy let Rick play from time to time, provided Rick behaved himself.

"Yeah, but not past your bedtime," Roy growled. "It's after midnight."

"Is that why you are sneaking your girlfriend in here then," Rick coyly and cheekily grinned at him, knowing how to effectively diffuse this situation. Roy knew the little brat had him cornered.

On the bed, Ashley had started to giggle softly. Roy turned to her, shocked, as the girl grabbed a pillow and buried her mirthful face in it. Rick, sensing he had a new ally and friend, grinned impishly at Roy.

"She seems nice," and with a smile, moved to sit beside the girl on the bed. "I'm Rick Hunter, and you are…"

Ashley lifted her head, and smiled back at the boy. "Ashley…I know you, your dad flies the planes. He brings you into the ice cream parlor once in a while, right?"

"Yeah, and you always give me the bubble gum flavor, right?" Rick nodded. "She's a nice girl, Roy. Better than some of the other…"

"Yeah, yeah, do you want to make it to bed in once piece, or should I just carry you there myself?"

"But Ashley thinks it's all right, doesn't she?" Rick turned big, mischievous blue eyes on Ashley, who turned to Roy helplessly amused.

"Well I say its bedtime, if you want to touch that computer again," Roy growled, as he moved towards the younger boy. Rick, sensing his defeat, leapt from the bed, and scurried to the door.

"All right, all right, gees." Rick tossed the dark hair from his eyes, and turned to smile at Ashley. "I'll see you later; remember, bubble gum, all right." Opening the door, he was gone, his small footsteps sounding down the hallway to his own room.

"He's quite cute," Ashley snorted finally when he was gone, again burying her head in Roy's pillow.

"He's quite a pest," Roy answered grumpily, falling onto the bed beside her.

"Is he your step-brother then," Ashley asked inquisitively, and Roy realized for not the first time that it was amazing how little some of the girls he brought home really knew anything about him.

"Something like that," Roy murmured, as he suddenly thought of better things to do than discuss the nine-year-old bane of his existence.

He had successfully maneuvered Ashley out of his home the next morning. She had left well before his mother, Pop, or Uncle Joe had gotten up. Not that the latter two would say much to his mother, but they would lecture him about being responsible, and Roy really didn't feel like being preached at first thing in the morning. He had thought he'd get away with his escapade Scott-free. He'd forgotten one tiny detail.

He was sipping coffee over his eggs at breakfast, his mother standing at the stove listening to her ubiquitous country music station. Roy never cared much for it, but it seemed a comfortable background to his home life, the twang of Garth Brooks on the radio. He was preparing to spend the day working on some new plane shipments that Pop had just got in for the circus, when Rick finally bounded downstairs, dark hair tousled, sleep griming his eyes.

"Rick Hunter, I called for you half an hour ago, what took you so long," Sandy Fokker's strawberry blonde ponytail whipped around to face her little charge with a motherly glare.

"I was sleeping," Rick yawned, "It's summer, I don't have school, and I can sleep in."

"You father wanted you up to help him clean out the tool shed today. They have a big show in a week, how are they going to get ready if they can't find their tools."

"Uhhh…" grunted Rick, his least favorite choir was cleaning the tool shed. But Pop Hunter was a stickler for cleanliness and neatness, especially in maintaining the planes. After all the accidents, Roy thought glumly, how could he not be that way.

"If you weren't up all night playing that stupid game of Roy's," Sandy grumbled angrily. Roy felt he had to defend himself, or else this would somehow be his fault.

"Hey, I said he could only play it till bedtime, I didn't say after."

"Yeah, well I heard voices down there when you got in," Sandy turned a pointed eye on her son. Roy felt an uneasy feeling in his stomach.

"You heard me when I got in," Roy willed his voice not to pitch itself quite THAT high.

"Always do, think I don't notice when my only son gets in, what sort of mother am I?" Sandy shrugged. "And I heard Mr. Hunter over there messing around. You should have been off to bed!"

"Did you hear Ashley too," Rick asked enthusiastically, as the blood rushed out of Roy's face, and the cup of coffee he'd been nursing clattered to the table with a crash.

"Ashley," Sandy turned slowly from the stove, towards the table where both boys sat, the dark haired one bobbing his head happily up and down, as the tow-headed one tried to sink his gangly, 6'4 frame somewhere underneath his chair.

"Yeah, she's Roy's new girlfriend," Rick continued unaware of the discomfort of Roy next to him. "She was nice; she works at the ice cream parlor. She remembered I liked bubble-gum ice cream when Pop takes me in there."

"Does she," Sandy's voice was calm and even, but her gray eyes flashed at the slowly melting form of her son. "Rick, tell you what, why don't you go check on the paper down the drive for me, while I fix you up some breakfast, will you?" She gave the boy a look that brooked no argument. As if finally catching on what he'd done, Rick looked at the miserable face of his adopted brother and then back at Sandy.

"Was I not supposed to mention Ashley?"

"Oh no, Rick, I'm glad you did. Now you go do what I said, I need a talk with Mr. Fokker over here."

Rick looked between mother and son, and without a word, rushed from the table, out the back door, and towards the lane that met the highway, where a box stood for the paper. Even several yards away from the house he could hear Sandy Fokker's shouts over the West Texas wind.

"Me and my big mouth," Rick thought miserably, "Now Roy won't ever let me play that game again."


	5. Chapter 5

The weekend had Roy Fokker beat. After two days of shows in Albuquerque and Santa Fe, he was ready to be home again, in his bed, and not move for a week. He yawned as the dusty New Mexican desert gave way to the scrubby brush of Texas. Could he really imagine a lifetime of this, he asked himself sleepily, as he tried to find a comfortable position in the Hunter Bros. traveling bus; Uncle Joe was flying his Fokker airplane back in the morning. Roy was supposed to be back tomorrow in time to start classes at the local junior college, like his mother wanted. All Roy wanted to do was fly, but Sandy was determined her son would have more than just 'airplanes on the brain' for the rest of his life.

"I got my education," Sandy had said when Roy protested, "why do you think Pop and Delia had me around to keep the books."

"You wash dishes, Mom," Roy had pointed out, earning a pop at his head from a well-aimed dishtowel. Sandy glared at her son.

"You don't have to do what I did, Roy. You could…go into engineering! Uncle Joe says you love working on the planes and are always thinking of modifying them. And look how you fixed up your Dad's plane." She smiled softly as she recalled her long-lost husband. She had never remarried, and never wanted to. Despite her handsome looks, she had devoted herself to her son, and to the Hunters, and hadn't regretted it.

"I suppose I could," Roy shrugged. Admittedly he was good at engineering, and had taken several classes in high school on it. Math and science classes had been his favorites, as well as history, at least all the military bits of it. But the idea of more boring classes all day, rather than flying, was particularly disinteresting.

"What's up, Roy," Rick plopped down on the seat in front of Roy, causing the young man to rouse from his thoughts. It was Rick's last weekend before starting 5th grade, and the boy was about as eager to return to school as Roy.

"Not much," Roy shrugged. "Just thinking about things," he shrugged, as Rick fiddled with a portable radio and headphones, trying to pick up stations through it.

"Wish I had a CD player," Rick grumbled. Roy knew this was a pointed remark; Rick had envied his own CD player on every trip they had made all summer.

"Tell you what, squirt, I'll let you have mine, if you promise to do well in school this year and not goof off like you did last year."

"I didn't goof off, I tried," Rick grumbled in self-defense. "I got C's in everything, didn't I?"

"Yeah, well C's don't get you into college someday," Roy quoted his mother's often-used phrase. Roy himself had done well in school for the most part, mostly A's and B's, and mostly because of his mother's often quoted phrase. Rick had been resistant, however, and drug his feet in school.

"Who's going to college, frat boy," Rick snorted impishly. "I don't want to go; I want to fly, like Pop and Uncle Joe."

"Yeah, but both of them graduated high school," Roy pointed out.

"And then they enlisted in the Air Force," Rick shrugged. "Only I don't want to ever do the military. Pop says it's only for warmongers and killing people. He says it's what made Uncle Joe so sad sometimes. And I don't want to kill people."

Both the Hunter brothers had served, though Mitch, the younger, hadn't made it to Vietnam like his brother Joe. Joe had served with Roy's father. Roy hadn't gotten to know his old man enough to learn the horrors of the war for him, but he did know something of the ones for Joe. He understood why both the Hunter brothers would be against war in any form, and especially for young Rick. Mitch had no desire for his son to see the things that his brother had to face.

Yet Roy couldn't be so sure on where his decisions lay. His own father had served, and had served honorably. He'd gone to Vietnam because, as his mother had said, he wished to defend his country, no matter whether the war was right or wrong. He had taken a duty to defend those he loved, and he would live with it. For Jim Fokker, serving in the military had never been about flying, as Roy suspected it had been for Joe and for Mitch. It had been about defending those he loved. The flying was only an added benefit.

"Anyway, Pop said I can start flying in competition here in a couple of years if I want," Rick prattled on, fumbling with his radio controls. "He said he'd help me get a racing plane if I want!"

"That's a big deal," Roy grinned at the dark head, reaching a hand to tousle the impossibly messy hair. It never stayed brushed, and Roy suspected Rick gave up on that long ago. "You want to fly in competition, ehh? Think you can handle it with the big boys?" Rick was just turning ten soon, and already he was a prodigious flyer. Pop Hunter had balked at the idea of his son going up so young, and had nearly beaten Roy's hide when the older boy had taken Rick up in his own Fokker plane when it was completed two years earlier. But seeing that he couldn't keep his son on the ground, Pop himself had taken up the teaching of Rick. He'd learned quickly and well, faster than Roy even at his age. Not that he was nearly as good as Roy now. Already at nearly nineteen, Roy was the air circus's star attraction and best pilot. He had a lot of potential according to Pop.

"I think I can handle it, if you can," Rick's pride always got the better of him. He stuck his thin, pointed chin in the air, causing Roy to laugh at him.

"We'll see, little brother, wait till you get there, huh."

"You'll see, I'll win, and when I do, I'll not have to go to school again."

"I wouldn't say that," Roy cautioned lightly. "You might want to finish high school first.

"Well, OK, but no more after that," Rick shrugged. "Besides, you're the smart one going to college.

"Yeah, something like that," Roy sighed.

"Don't you want to go?" Rick looked puzzled.

"It couldn't hurt, I guess," Roy shrugged. "Besides, what else would I do? I can't just fly around in planes forever, can I?"

"That's what I want to do," Rick seemed to be confused as to why a person couldn't.

"Yeah," Roy lapsed into silence. What was he going to do with himself, he wondered, degree or not?

"Ahhh, here's something," Rick was triumphant as he fiddled with his radio, but then his face fell. "Oh, news, who cares…" but he stopped just as his thumb was reaching for the dial again. His freckled, sunburned face was still, causing Roy to look at him with alarm.

"What's up," Roy asked, frowning at the boy, who only waved a hand at him to be quiet.

"I don't know, it sounds like…." He shook his head, then pulled one of the headphone buds from his own ear and handed it to Roy, wordlessly.

Roy took it and held it to his ear, as bits and pieces of a news report filtered in. The crisp accent was nothing like the twang of the local news he expected to hear, and it took him a moment to realize the person was from one of the large news stations based out of New York, probably CNN from the sound of it. The excitement seemed to center on some sort of explosion or crash landing in the Pacific Ocean.

"What is it," Roy looked at Rick, who shook his head in confusion.

"They don't know if it's terrorists or something from space," Rick murmured, listening. "Whatever it was, it was huge, and it nearly took out a small island."

"Holy…" Roy breathed, as the news reporter broke in with reports from naval ships stating it was not a nuclear device, and that they suspect it was space debris that had fallen to earth. He continued on with chatter about how NASA did not inform the public of this, and whether NASA even knew about it, what this could mean about the space program, and how terrorist cells across the world were denying that this was an attack on their part.

"You think it could be aliens, Roy," Rick whispered softly, his blue eyes wide.

"What, little green men decided to say hello then," Roy snorted. "It's probably just nothing, Rick, just a satellite that fell from the sky."


	6. Chapter 6

"What do you think the possibility of alien life means for human existence," his professor dropped this on the class a month later as Roy tried desperately to stay awake. He had thought that taking an "Introduction to Religion" course would be a boring but easy way to fulfill a requirement for his Associate in Science degree. Instead he found that not only was the class was mind-numbing dull, but the teacher was a crystal-hugging fruitcake. Most of the class stared blankly at him.

One girl, Janey was the one annoying type you found typically in every class raising her hand to say something, whether it was intelligent or not. She nearly bounced from her seat this time. The professor, named Steven Jenkins, or "Steve" as he liked to be called by the students, nodded beaming at her.

"Well, I mean with this ship crash landing, it means that we aren't alone in the world, are we?"

"Universe," someone in the back hissed. The class giggled, as Janey blushed to the roots of her pale, blonde hair.

"Now, now," Steve chided, but nodded at Janey, who seemed mollified with this gesture. Roy wondered briefly whether Janey and Steve had something on the side going on the rest of the class didn't know about. He doubted it; Steve struck him as the type who wasn't that into girls.

"God, they just can't shut up," grumbled a girl next to him. Her name was Miranda, and she had the look of a properly cynical person he could respect. Her black hair was highlighted with pink, she wore metal studded belts, and t-shirts with insulting phrases on the front. And above all else, she was no Janey. Rather, Miranda was a girl his mother would hate, and whom Roy found amazingly attractive in that slightly, "I'm a bad-ass" sort of way.

"I think she needs to talk to fill the vacuum in her head," Roy snorted softly, causing Miranda to chuckle.

"You'd think an alien space-ship landing didn't happen everyday," she winked at Roy. He felt a tingle somewhere in his middle. This was usually how it started, some girl would wink at him, he'd respond, and they'd end up in a broom closet, the back of his truck, in his airplane, wherever he could get five minutes alone with them. Roy's reputation as a 'ladies man' had gotten him in more than a few scrapes back home in high school. But this was college, albeit community college. No one here knew his name, right?

Yet after his lunch period, before his basic engineering class, Miranda seemed to get to know his name very well. She murmured it over and over when they met up together at her beat up Chevy Cavalier. When everything was said and done, she grinned at him in the sticky humidity of the car.

"I think I was right about you," she purred as she adjusted the pink bra strap on her shoulder. The camouflage t-shirt she had been wearing moments before was somewhere in the back seat along with schoolbooks and old food wrappers. She was sitting on top of him, his tall frame twisted in the passenger's seat of her beat up car. Roy blinked at her in confusion.

"What's that supposed to mean," he asked quizzically, pushing his damp hair out of his eyes.

"That you'd be the sort who'd do girls in cars," she flashed an ironic smile at him. Roy, still flush from their activities, gazed stupidly at her.

"That I'd…what," he found his voice sounded querulous despite the relative laxity in his limbs.

"Face it, Roy, its not like people don't know," Miranda shrugged nonchalantly, reaching across to the back seat for her shirt. "I mean I ask around about guys I'm interested in before I try anything, you can't be too careful in this day and age. And lots of people know you."

"Know me for what," Roy found his stomach sort of plummeting somewhere below where she sat on top of him.

"Well, that you are a 'playa'," Miranda pulled the t-shirt over her pink highlights, and adjusted her many silver hoops in her ears where they had caught on the fabric. "I figured it shouldn't be too hard then getting into your pants. You know I've been eyeing you since school started."

"You mean…" Roy felt slightly sick, and a bit used. He wondered, in a vague sort of way, if this was how many of the girls back in high school he'd taken home had felt when everything was said and done. He'd like to think he was much less cavalier than this girl, much more romantic.

"Yeah, well face it Roy, you're hot," Miranda winked at him again, but this time he found the gesture crude and disgusting.

"Anyway, I'm off to a math class next, if you want to meet up later," she leaned over to kiss his stunned face lightly, and then wiggled off top of him, re-adjusting her black denim skirt and metal studded belt as she went. "See ya," she waved as she climbed out of the driver's side door. "Don't forget to lock up."

Roy sat in the sticky warmth of Miranda's car, his pants at a rather indecent level by any standards, staring up at the top of the gray interior. He'd been used, and he knew it.

He could only blame himself really, after all he'd made a reputation as being the 'love 'em and leave 'em' type, fond of wooing and bedding girls, then forgetting their names the next day. His mother had yelled at him for it, asked him what sort of example he was putting up for Rick. Rick, Roy thought, hadn't even noticed girls yet, but now he had to wonder. He thought of his 'little brother' in this situation with some girl someday…or even worse. And he thought of all the girls who he'd been with since he was fourteen, and realized how completely vile he could be.

As he pulled his jeans up, he murmured ruefully to himself, "What would your Dad say, Roy," and he couldn't imagine. Uncle Joe imparted some war stories involving Vietnamese hookers that he made Roy swear on his life never to tell his mother. "Jimmy loved your mom as the day is long, Roy, you telling tales will only upset her needlessly at a man whose dead and gone and can't defend himself." Somehow he didn't think that Jim Fokker would be too proud of his son's escapades, however. Nor, to be honest, was Roy proud of himself. He climbed out of Miranda's car, grabbing his engineering books, his leather flight jacket, and began meandering aimlessly to campus, letting the breeze dry out his sweat-drenched hair.

What did he want? He remembered his conversation with Rick only a couple of months ago, the day the spaceship had landed. He had been thinking of it then. Young and youthful Rick had wanted to fly a plane that was all. Roy couldn't argue with that, he too loved to fly, he was amazing at it. But there had to be more to life than just chasing women and flying planes. College wasn't doing it for him, he knew that now. He didn't mind it, but the idea of spending his life holed up in this dusty, two-bit part of the world gnawed at him endlessly. There were greater and better things out there, right?

"Hey there, man, nice jacket," a voice called from behind him, and Roy turned. A military type, most likely Navy from his tan uniform, stood smoking a cigarette quietly by the Student Union building, leaning against a retaining wall quietly. He had the look of the military recruiters who appeared on campus, and looked to be in his early 40's. The right age when active duty began wearing on you, but you were too young to call it quits, Roy thought. He shrugged as he looked down at his jacket.

"It was my dad's," he proudly fingered the patches on the side that indicated the squadron his father had served in.

"He was in Nam then?" the man asked, and Roy nodded.

"Yeah, I was myself for a bit. Names McCullough," he held out a hand to Roy, who took it confidently. "You fly yourself?"

"Yeah, for an air circus not far from here, my dad flew for them till…he died."

"Sorry to hear that, son, accident?"

"Yeah," after all these years, why was it hard to admit that to this stranger, Roy wondered in confusion.

"Well it happens to the best of pilots," McCullough shrugged. "One of my good buddies died two years back, he'd been in the Air Force for twenty years, went to pilot a Cessna out of Lubbock, and crashed it in high winds. It happens."

McCullough took a last drag on the cigarette before stabbing it out in a sand filled ashtray beside him. "You plan to join then?"

Roy was so shocked from that statement, he nearly laughed. "What?" His eyes stared in wonderment at the fellow with his close-cropped brown hair and his bulldog build. He looked the type to bully a man into joining more than convincing him.

"Well you said you could fly," McCullough said reasonably. "You plan on flying in a circus forever?"

"No," and to be honest, Roy's previous train of thought had confirmed that for him. As much as he loved Pop, Uncle Joe, and Rick, he had no plans on staying. And he didn't think till now he even realized it.

"You want me to get the pamphlets for you," McCullough's voice was playfully sarcastic.

"No," Roy murmured, as he fingered the patches on his father's coat. "How about I get you a coffee though," Roy offered.

"I won't turn down anything free," the man grinned back.


	7. Chapter 7

"I don't see why you joined the ARMY," Rick wailed as he flopped back on Roy's bed, glaring at him despite his head hanging upside down off the side. Roy ignored him as he methodically packed the things he was taking with him, his basic clothing, a couple of books, a photograph of his mother and father, as well as one of him and Rick in his cherished airplane, and the model of that plane that Jim Fokker had given his son many years before.

"It's the Navy, there's a difference. I'll leave the rest of my models here, see that you don't mess them up," Roy warned as he did a once over on his room. "Mom get's the computer, but I said to make sure to let you play on it when you want."

"How come I don't get it," Rick pouted.

"Your dad said no," Roy grinned down at the boy whose pale face was turning beet red from his awkward position. "He say's you're too young."

"I'm not," Rick sounded indignant. "I'm flying in the junior national flying championships this year."

"Apparently you can handle a plane, just not a computer," Roy snorted, as Rick flipped back up and lay flat on the bed.

"You didn't answer my question, Fokker," Rick insisted, in a rare instance of using Roy's last name. He'd picked it up lately from his father and uncle, and used it when he wanted Roy's attention.

"Well, HUNTER," Roy turned to face him, smirking. "I didn't want to fly in this dusty outfit forever."

"But WHY," Rick whined, not understanding. At ten, he had much of the world to understand before he could ever see where Roy was coming from.

"Because, I have to," Roy shook his head.

"Don't tell me I'll understand when I'm older," Rick petulantly rolled his eyes. Roy threw a roll of socks at his head.

"I hope you do," Roy only sighed. "At this rate you'll be stupid for the rest of your life."

The roll of socks sailed past Roy's ear and neatly into his bag.

"Oh, thanks," Roy laughed, as he zipped up his duffle, the only thing he was allowed to take with him.

"Roy, you about ready," His mother's voice sounded from the foot of the stairs, bright and brittle all at the same time.

"Coming," Roy grabbed the bag as Rick raised himself up to follow.

"I want you to stay out of here, you know," Roy knew this was a useless admonition; Rick had been wandering into his room since he could walk.

"I won't come in, sheesh," Rick grumbled, but Roy knew that promise would last only as long as the first day or so Roy was gone. Rick would come here often, both because of curiosity, but because he'd miss Roy. And somehow that warmed his heart in going, that this little boy who'd idolized him so would miss him.

"You'll take care of Mom for me, right," Roy looked down at the small, slight figure in front of him. Rick, for all the good-looking Hunter features he promised to have one day, had his mother's small build, perfect for pilots. It dwarfed him compared to the tall and lanky Roy.

"I'll try," Rick's voice was gruff. But Roy saw some suspicious moisture on the boy's eyes.

"And keep an eye on Pop and Uncle Joe, right," Rick nodded at Roy as he continued listing off responsibilities for Rick. "And no touching my plane."

"I'd NEVER touch your plane," Rick's blue eyes were solemn. "That's your plane, no one else's. How could you think I would?"

"Just checking," Roy grinned at him. "And you make sure to write, OK. I have to admit, I'll miss you."

Without much provocation, the small boy threw his skinny arms around Roy's middle and held on tightly. Roy was stunned, but then he loosened Rick's grip, knelt to his level, and hugged him with all the force that ten years together put into him. After all, he was Roy's little brother, biological or not."

"Be good," he whispered, as Rick sniffed treacherously.

"I'll be home on leave when I can, and we'll go for a ride then." Roy tousled Rick's dark curls, and then moved to the stairs.

He had no idea that when that squirming little object Aunt Delia had presented to him with such pride had wormed his way into Roy Fokker's heart, but somehow he did. He imagined his life without Rick Hunter about all the time, and somehow, it felt a little bit emptier.

"But I'll make sure that this world's a better place for him," Roy silently promised,

"For him, and for Pop, Uncle Joe, and Mom. I want Rick to not have to do anything for the rest of his life but fly, just like he always wanted." The idea of that made Roy smile, even as his childhood home faded in the rearview mirror of his mother's car.


End file.
